


Tolkien's England

by Lady_Caryatid



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Historical Hetalia, Human Characters, Human POV, J.R.R. Tolkien - Freeform, World War I, john ronald reuel tolkien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 19:24:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3948718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Caryatid/pseuds/Lady_Caryatid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For one young and imaginative English soldier, the monotony of trench warfare is interrupted when he encounters a strange individual by the name of Arthur Kirkland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Skies and Trenches

The Welsh word _wybren_ was much more sonorous than its English equivalent, _sky_ ,  Ronald thought instinctively as a small patch of blue opened up in the smoke-choked air above. He shifted, staring at it, as if in holding it in his gaze he might be able to keep it from disappearing completely.  
  
He stared intently at it for about a minute, but a little cloud of smoke and dust soon veiled it from his sight, the sky and air becoming once again a dark, stifling cloak that seemed to hang threateningly over the heads of everyone in the trench.  
  
Ronald grimaced, and then repositioned himself, facing the line of German troops a couple hundred yards away. He could hardly see them due to the haze, but he knew they were there, just like he was: staring, waiting, just like he was now, for someone to strike, something to happen. But no one dared to do anything. Charging across the middle ground, known to everyone as "no man's land," was suicide, so all he could do now was wait, patiently, with the rest of the British troops. For shots. For orders from their superiors. For something to happen. Occasionally there was shooting, which was quick and deadly, but the majority of the time it was waiting, and during these long periods of time, Ronald allowed his mind to wander down long, interconnected paths into the past.  
  
One fellow soldier's name was Graham, which made Ronald remember the etymology of the name: Graham, which must have come from the Old English _groeg-háma_ , which meant "gray-hame, gray coat," which would be used to refer to a wolf. Then he thought of the famous wolf of Norse mythology, Fenris Ulf, who bit off the hand of the god Tyr and could only be bound by special silent and invisible chains...Ronald made a mental note to himself to find an equivalent for "gray-hame" in Qenya, a language he was working on creating in his spare time. He'd made some extra notes on a few scraps of paper already after he'd been drafted, but otherwise it was mostly in his head. He shifted some more in place irritably, the mud in the trench soaking up to his shins. When would this war end?  He wanted desperately to get back to his home, to Oxford where the only battles he'd have to deal with would be the ones on paper that happened long ago with shining swords, bows and arrows, all written down in glorious alliterative verse. Not like this war, full of discomfort and awful boredom.  
  
"Oi, Tolkien!" The sound of Graham's voice calling him broke Ronald's train of thought.   
  
"What's it now? Any news from the captain?"  
  
"Naw. Nothing like that. But there's a certain chap who's coming over to us, and I haven't got a clue what's up with him."  
  
"What do you mean by that?"  
  
Graham shrugged "I think he's coming this way. You'll hear soon enough." He'd barely spoken when angry voices could be heard coming from Ronald's side.  
  
"...There's been a mistake, how many times must I tell you that?"  
  
"Now, please stay calm, young master–"  
  
"I shouldn't be here at all! I'm not a foot soldier, you git! I'm a diplomat, I was on my way to a negotiations meeting just now, it's just that there was an accident and I had to–"  
  
"Sir, you're aware that deserting is punishable by–"  
  
"I was not deserting, you git! It must be some other man named Arthur Kirkland that you're looking for, because it is certainly not me!"  
  
At this two figures emerged; one was the captain, looking cross and frustrated, and the other was a red-faced and disheveled young man who was positively bristling all over with indignation.  
  
"D'ya hear that, boys?" the captain gave a grim laugh. "He says he's a diplomat on the way to a negotiations meeting! Completely batty! As if any sane diplomat would be caught a hundred paces near this front!"  
  
"For the last time, I am not–"  
  
"Now looky here, boy," The captain cut the newcomer off sharply. "I don't want no nonsense being reported, you hear? I've already sent word to the higher-ups about this, which is more than I'd usually do for a loony like you. Maybe they'll believe your story. Until then, you're to stay here until further notice. You can replace Maxwell, since we lost him just a few days ago."  
  
"But I'm not–"  
  
"Oh, for goodness' sake, just shut up and get over there!"  
  
The young man opened his mouth to utter another string of protests, but the captain was gone.  
  
"Um, hello," Ronald said weakly, not quite knowing what else to say. The visitor relaxed a bit, and turned towards him.  
  
"Hello yourself," he smiled half-heartedly.  
  
"I'm John Ronald Tolkien, but you can just call me Ronald. This is my mate Graham."  
  
"Oi," said Graham.  
  
"Arthur Kirkland. Pleased to make your acquaintance." Arthur extended his hand, and Ronald shook it as if they were a couple of gentlemen meeting at Oxford for a dissertation rather than soldiers in a muddy trench. Ronald inspected the newcomer. He was of rather average height and girth,, with unkempt sandy-blonde hair and a uniform that looked as if he'd put it on too rapidly to care how it looked. His only outstanding features really, were his incredibly bushy eyebrows.  
  
"I'm sorry you got stuck with us,' Ronald said.   
  
"Oh, it's all right. It's not your fault." Arthur sighed and leaned on the side. "It's just another stupid mix-up, and I happened to be just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm sure that idiot Francis set me up too. Stupid Triple Entente." He mumbled the last part to himself.  
  
"What was that?"  
  
"Nothing. I'm sure this will all be over in a few days anyway, as soon as this misunderstanding clears up. How about you? It's Ronald, right? How long you've been here?"  
  
Ronald shrugged. "Some weeks. Probably more. I don't really keep track of time like I used to. It's mostly the same, day in, day out."  
  
"Where're you from?"  
  
"Oxford. You?"  
  
"London."  
  
"Got any family there?"  
  
"Sort of. I have brothers in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, but we don't talk much. How 'bout you?"  
  
"I've got a wife at home. Edith."  
  
"Miss her?" It was a needless question.  
  
"Yes." The haze lifted a bit, and Ronald could barely make out the tops of some of the Germans' heads. Enough to see, but not enough target to shoot. Between the two lines stretched a barren wasteland full of smoke, shells, barbed wire, and corpses, corpses strewn everywhere from the fateful times when soldiers had attempted to charge the opposite line. In the yellowish light they looked grotesque and unreal, otherworldly in a decisively horrible way. Ronald blinked and grimaced at the sight which had become all too familiar, and moved down where he wouldn't be able to see, at least for a little while.  
  
"This isn't how war was supposed to be before," he murmured to himself. "If I had to be a soldier at all, why couldn't it have been about, oh I don't know, a thousand years before? Back when there were still knights, and shining swords, and longbows!"  
  
"Wars were still just as awful  in those days too, you know."  
  
Ronald jumped; he hadn't thought that Arthur had heard him. "I suppose you are right. But at least they had deeds and battles worth writing and painting about, and honor and chivalry, when one could say _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_ and be telling the truth. But us here? All we do all day long is wait and stare at our enemy. Firing occasionally. Those who do try to make any advancements are gunned down immediately. Who'd want to write a lay or ballad about that?"  
  
Arthur shrugged. "This war is something new for all of us. But still, I really don't think those battles back then really were half as glorious as all those poems you were talking about. I mean, there was glory and honor and all that for sure, but there were ugly sides to them too. Sides that weren't always included in those ballads."  
  
"You sound awfully sure of yourself. What are you, a historian?"  
  
"Of a sort."  
  
"You're right, of course," Ronald smiled weakly. "I'm no historian;I mostly just read the myths and legends of cultures long gone. I'm a Philologist, so I read a lot of the old English poems, fairy stories, sagas, and the rest."  
  
At first Arthur didn't answer, and Ronald started to worry that he was talking too much. But soon the newcomer spoke again.  
  
"So you've read  _Beowulf_ , then?"  
  
Ronald beamed, more than he had since the beginning of the war.  
  
"Why, yes! Of course! It's one of my favorites, after the Kalevala! Even if, well, it's not really English, but a Danish story. Not many people outside of Oxford that I've met know about it. Have you read it?"  
  
Arthur raised his thick eyebrows. "I have," he said. "a long time ago, so I don't remember much of the details. But I used to be a fan. I'm glad that it's still being read, even if it's only at Oxford."  
  
"I'm glad too," said Ronald, still beaming. "I love Old English texts. Although–although–oh, you probably think I'm talking too much."  
  
"Not at all," said Arthur, smiling for real this time. "You were saying?"  
  
"As a proud Englishman," Ronald started off, "it's a shame that there aren't that many stories and myths that are truly English in origin, you know? The Germanic and Nordic peoples had their grand mythologies. So did Ancient Greece and Rome. But what of us? Where is the mythology of the English people?"  
  
"There are the legends of Camelot and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table," Arthur suggested.  
  
"Those were copied from the Welsh mythos," Ronald lamented. "It's not the same. I'm talking something older, more ancient. Something that–that came before Arthur, before Christianity and the Romans came to the Isles, that may have been the inspiration of the legends that came afterward. I like to think that there was such a mythology a long time ago, but it's just been lost. Forever, probably. But since it is lost, we can only imagine what it was like, figuring it out from the fragments that have been left to us. It's like piecing together a puzzle with many pieces missing. You have to make up, imagine the rest of the picture, but you need to make sure that they line up with the pieces that you do have. Eala Earendel! It's so–" Ronald stopped talking as he realized that both Arthur and Graham were staring at him.  
  
"For Pete's sake, Ronald, must you go on your mythological rants to Mr. Kirkland here? You may as well go over to the German line and talk their ears off. Maybe then they'll surrender." Graham laughed heartily at his own joke. Ronald was not amused.   
  
"That's mostly it," he said to Arthur. "I'm just trying to find a mythology for my beloved England." He shook his head sheepishly. "She's gone without one for far too long. It may already be lost forever but I...I'd like to try my hand at recreating it, in the form of a book or novel or something. " It would also give him a place to use all his carefully constructed languages that were taking up space in his head, he added silently. He looked up to see Arthur giving him a quizzical expression. "I sound batty, don't I?" he laughed at himself, but Arthur's response was one that he frankly hadn't expected.  
  
"What makes you so sure that England is a she?"

* * *

  
  
Three days, two frightening bouts of shooting between the two lines and one bizarre argument concerning the correct gender of countries later, Arthur was called away from the front by none other than the captain himself. This time, however, the captain was oddly submissive, apologizing profusely to Arthur about the mistake.  
  
"Honestly, sir," said the captain. "I had absolutely no idea whatsoever. No one ever tells me anything around here."  
  
"It's nothing, don't mention it," grumbled Arthur as he made his way out. "So long, Ronald." He said before leaving. "Good luck with that mythology of yours. Maybe I'll see you again after the war."  
  
"I doubt it." Ronald said, "but do drop by Oxford sometime, hm? For me."  
  
Arthur smiled. "I have to go now, really. But maybe I will." He waved and was gone.

* * *

  
  
  
England was soon riding safely away from the lines in an armored vehicle, sulking next to France, who had admitted to having at least some responsibility for the mix-up.  
  
"But the truth is, there sure are quite a few Arthur Kirklands in your army, you know." He chuckled.  
  
"Oh shut up. You did this on purpose, I know you did."  
  
"Now, why would I do that? This isn't the Hundred Year's war anymore. We're allies now. Besides," France gave a knowing grin. "You haven't personally been to a battlefield for quite some time now, Angleterre."  
  
England was about to give a sharp retort when he considered this. True, it had been a long time since he'd been on a battlefield that wasn't at sea. But that battlefield hadn't even been much of a battle at all–like what Ronald had said, it had been mostly full of anxiety and tedium. Different than anything that had been fought before, and, in a way, deadlier. He sighed and leaned back in his seat, feeling oddly nostalgic for the past times, when there were knights in shining armor charging the enemy on beautiful horses...  
  
_Snap out of it_ , he told himself, trying hard to shake the fairy tale out of his mind and conjure up the feeling of the heavy breastplates, chain maille digging into his skin, thick woolen tunics soaked with sweat and blood, the ugly side of the tales that he had been telling Ronald about. But try as he might, he still couldn't get the image of the knight out of his head. Maybe, just maybe there was at least some grain of truth in that image.  
  
_A Mythology for England_. He remembered what Ronald had said about a "Forgotten Mythology," and thought about Mama Britannia, something he hardly ever did, probably due to the fact that he'd never met her. Maybe he had, a long time ago as a young child, further back than he could remember. Heck, she probably didn't even call herself that, what with "Britannia" being a Latin name and all. Apparently she'd disappeared shortly after he was born, leaving him and his brothers to fend for themselves. Perhaps that mythology had been lost along with her.  
  
"Are you alright, Angleterre?" France was turned towards him, looking unusually concerned.  
  
"Hm?" England woke from his contemplations. "It's nothing. Just..."  
  
"Just what?"  
  
"I might be too old to be thinking this," said England. "But now that I consider it, in a way we're...orphans, aren't we?"  
  
France was silent for a moment."Well," he said finally, "I've never thought about it that way. We just kind of had to take care of ourselves, didn't we?"  
  
"Yeah," England fiddled with a loose brass button on his uniform. "But we came out tougher for it."  
  
"I'd sure hope so." The armored vehicle rumbled over some bump in the road. "For the sake of this war, I mean. It's testing all of us. We're either going to come out of this dead or stronger."  
  
"'The War to End All Wars.' Do you really believe that?"  
  
"Of course. I mean, when this ends, how could anything be worse?"  
  
"I don't know. I don't particularly want to know. But whatever happens, it's never going to be the way it was again, isn't it?"  
  
" _Jamais,_ " France gave an uneasy chuckle. "But hey, I can count on you to watch my back this time, right?" he gave his companion a playful back-slap.  
  
"Shut up. Of course I will. This time at least."  
  
"I thought as much." They didn't speak for the rest of the ride, and soon England began to get drowsy. He leaned his head against the back of the seat and soon dozed off, with half-forgotten memories of times long ago galloping through his dreams.


	2. The Deluge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronald dreams of floods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> England doesn't show up in person in this part; it's mostly about Ronald and his introspection.

Small, foamy waves gently crumbled on the surf as Ronald strolled leisurely along the beach, taking deep breaths of the fresh, salty air–much different and much more preferable to the stench that lingered over the damp trenches, the memory of which now seemed very far away indeed. How long ago had it been? He thought, but decided to not dwell upon it, choosing rather to focus on the pleasure of the moment.

  
He didn't get much time to savor it, though, for there must have been some imperceptible change in the air, and while a moment before he had been calm and relaxed, now he felt suddenly nervous and panicked for no apparent reason. He turned, nervously, back and forth on the surf, trying to decide what to do, when he heard a great roar, and the sea that had been calm a minute ago now raised itself into a wave of monstrous proportions, climbing higher and higher, a mountain of water. Ronald turned and ran–a futile action, but what else could he do? The giant wave crashed down, rushing over the land and sweeping Ronald away with it….  
  
  
He woke up gasping, startling himself and the other patients in the ward. After taking a few grateful gulps of air, he relaxed again, leaning back on his pillow to look up at the gray hospital ceiling.

  
"Pyrexia of unknown origin," the doctors had called it, but to everyone else it was simply known as "trench fever." He groaned, feeling suddenly dizzy, and closed his eyes as the images of his time at the front refreshed themselves in his memory–shells bursting, gas spreading, frenzied night missions cutting the barbed wire, the masses of corpses strewn between the lines, slowly rotting in the dreary rains that plagued them on the Western Front…he forced his eyes open, trying to put those images out of his mind. He wasn't at the front anymore, he reminded himself. He was in Birmingham, England, recovering from the irritating lice-borne illness he had contracted on the field. In a way, he hoped that he wouldn't recover so quickly–every day spent in the hospital was a day spent away from the stale horror that was happening in West mainland Europe.

  
Ronald grabbed his notebook, which was lying on the stand beside his bed, and turned to a blank page. Throughout his time on sick leave, he'd taken the time to brush up on his Spanish and French, and had even begun to teach himself a little Russian. It had been annoying him lately that he could deliver a crushing rebuttal in Latin at Oxford debates and enchant his friends with the ancient Norse tales in the original Icelandic, but could barely hold a normal conversation with his French colleagues without lapsing into his bad habit of mumbling and stumbling over his own words. But all language lessons aside, he was mostly just glad to have time to work on his personal projects. His notebook was full of notes on Qenya grammar and roots–he had a sizable vocabulary by now, and he'd even begun writing some simple poems in it. As he stared at the blank page in his notebook, however, instead of writing he began to draw long, curling lines that eventually turned into the image of a tidal wave ravaging a landscape–the dream that had troubled him that night, and many nights before. 

  
Ronald couldn't remember the first time that nightmare had come to haunt his sleep, but it had haunted him for a long time–always the same, a giant wave would appear out of nowhere and engulf the land. It had terrified him as a child, and had never gone away. Now, as an adult, he decided that he should try to understand it, to make some sense out of it. What could it possibly mean? Was there a story behind it, long forgotten?

  
He laughed to himself, quietly. His work as a philologist had taught him to ask such questions whenever he encountered a strange or interesting word or phrase. The simplest suffix or root could have a long and noble history behind it that could easily be overlooked if taken at face value. Because of this, Ronald was not one to view anything on a superficial level, even if what he was investigating was a strange recurring dream. He scribbled some notes next to his doodle:  
  
 _Great wave, recurring dream–deluge. THE Deluge. From diluvium, Latin. Noah's flood–Flood legends around the world…._  
  
He scribbled some more, and inevitably his mind drifted to his largest and most personal project of all–his English Mythology. He wondered if, somehow, he could turn his nightmare into a story that could become a part of that mythology–after all, every culture had a flood legend–why couldn't he put his own twist on it? He jotted down this idea excitedly. He had only a handful of vaguely related stories for his mythology, but he hoped to someday bring them together into something more coherent, grand, something worthy of his motherland–for of course, despite being born in South Africa, England would always be his motherland.  
Motherland. The word made him remember a rather amusing discussion he had had with Arthur Kirkland about the genders of nations.

  
"But countries and continents are always feminine," Ronald had argued. "We refer to our native lands as our mother nations, and the personifications are always female: there's Mariana of France, Columbia of America, Fjallkonan the Lady of Iceland, and don't forget, it's Britannia who rules the waves."

  
"I never understood how that ridiculous convention started." Arthur had grumbled. "Why can't it be 'fatherland' for once? Who decided that all nations must be female? For all you know it may be just the opposite."

  
Ronald would have waved his hands above his head in frustration if he hadn't had to be afraid of German machine guns. "I don't know! It's more poetic and proper to refer to them as 'she!' Does it really even matter! It's not as if countries are like people, you know, having a definite sex! Good heavens, I'm glad that English doesn't have feminine and masculine nouns like in the Romance languages!"

  
Arthur had smirked, making a strange expression under those bushy eyebrows of his that Ronald hadn't been able to figure out, but mercifully they ended the conversation and never brought the subject up a gain in the remaining twelve hours that Arthur was with them.

  
Ronald wondered where he had gone after leaving the front, if he really was a diplomat as he had claimed, and a thousand other things–there were several curious things about that man, Arthur–the fact that he seemed familiar with Beowulf was one, but also how the captain had suddenly deferred to him on that last day. That was odd. But despite those oddities, there was definitely something about Arthur Kirkland that Ronald, as analytical as he was, just couldn't place, something that had made Ronald feel comfortable telling him all about his absurd ambitions of creating a mythology, something that had made him sure that Arthur wouldn't laugh or shake his head at such a far-fetched prospect, unlike Graham or the others.

  
Come to think of it, he'd hardly spoken a word about his project to anyone outside of his circle of close friends, the Tea Club Barrovian Society, T.C.B.S. for short. They had understood him far better than anyone else he knew, even more than Edith did. With fondness he remembered the days they had spent sneaking tea into the library to have their discussions and critiques on each other's poetry–good old Rob, Geoffrey and Christopher had always been there for him, and they had all firmly believed that the four of them could–and would–create something, important, something far greater than the sum of them all…

  
But now Rob and Geoffrey were dead, killed in action, and Christopher was too far away to be of any comfort, leaving Ronald on his own, wondering if it had all been just a foolish fantasy all along. 

  
 _No, it wasn't. Don't talk like that_. Tucked into Ronald's notebook was the last letter he had gotten from Geoffrey mere days before his death, urging him to remember everything their little club had sought to do and create. Ronald imagined Geoffrey sitting calmly in the empty seat the window, smiling as he talked.  
"You can't give up on us," said his friend. "It's your job now to carry our torch and create what we were all striving for. The shrapnel might have got to us first, but the T.C.B.S. lives through you.  "

  
"I can't do it all by myself, Ronald protested. "if you're talking about my grand mythology, I–I don't even know. It's such a ridiculous idea in the first place, I could never take it to the heights that we wanted.  The Tea Club is dead, Geoff–and come to think of it, so are you!" 

  
"You always had quite the imagination, John Ronald." The Geoffrey in his laughed heartily. "I'm sure you'll put it to great use. Don't stop writing! Create your story, for poor old Rob and Chris and I–no, not just for us. Write a legendarium for England to pride itself on!"

  
_Tappa-tap-tap-tap-tappa-tap._

  
Ronald woke up slowly this time, to the sound of rain pelting his window. The chair next to the window was empty, which confused him–hadn't he just been talking to Geoffrey a moment ago? No, that couldn't be right–Geoffrey Smith was dead, and he was gripping his last letter in his hand. 

_Just another dream._

The rain was getting heavier, pounding the window as if his Deluge would be coming in the form of water from heaven, not the sea, but John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, warm and dry in his hospital bed, was already forming in his mind a story to accompany his great wave– still in its development stage, but the basic idea already there.  A story that would fit in the same world as his others, to go along with a poem he had written about a mariner on a flying ship carrying a star into the sky….

  
 _"Write a legendarium for England to pride itself on!"_  Geoffrey had said in Ronald's dreams, and Ronald was not one to ignore a friend.

  
 _I will,_  he thought to himself as he folded up the letter and tucked it back into its page in his notebook.  _I will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! This was the very first fic I ever wrote and published, which was inspired by Humphrey Carpenter's biography of J.R.R. Tolkien–that's where I got most of my info about Ronald's personality as well as his early approaches to the legendarium that would later become part of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion–a worthy mythology for England indeed...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This part was written to be standalone, but the next chapter works as a supplement to it. Tolkien was quite an amazing guy, as well as a huge nerd. I'm so glad that England, and the rest of the world as well, has been able to benefit from his grand imagination and mythologies.


End file.
